After Thoughts: Continuity, A Tool to be used Wisely

 Continuity, such a fascinating topic. As a writing tool, it is simply the act of taking an event in the story and having elements of it permeate the setting in future arcs. In its best form, it creates drama by serving as a permanent state of the world and serves to inform characters in the setting for future storylines. However, in its worst forms, it can often invalidate tension by creating a ruleset that, while internally consistent, completely removes stakes from the equation. Sometimes continuity is the best thing in the world but sometimes it can be little more than an obstruction. Here I will be tackling continuity as a writing tool, how it works, when it doesn't, and ways it could be used better or worse in your stories.

So first let's tackle what is continuity. As I said, continuity is simply elements of one prior story arc having lasting consequences in the setting for later story arcs to reference and build upon. Sometimes this can be as simple as a character establishing that they like a certain drink, and is seen drinking it in a later scene. Sometimes it can be as large as a catastrophe that permanently influences the way the characters think and behave. It is a variation of internal consistency that pertains to plot events specifically as opposed to setting rules. Basically the idea is that, if continuity is at play with an event, we accept that the event did happen and whether or not the characters are affected or the world state changes in any way is the metric we use to judge whether it's good or bad.

But whether continuity is good or bad is very different from whether it's present or absent. If continuity is absent, all that means is that an event that you see in an episode or a story either didn't happen or happened in its own isolated part of the series.

For the most part, continuity is seen as a good thing. One of the most ubiquitous examples of this is Tony Stark in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The core part of his character that's consistent across all the MCU movies he's in is his desire to be better and make up for prior mistakes. This is the one thing that's constant for his entire arc. But how it manifests changes depending on the events that happened to him.

The selling of weapons by his own company by one of his close associates causes him to shut down the weapons division of Stark Tech entirely and make suits of armor he can use to protect the world himself, to make up for his mistake of stoking the fires of war in the first place, even if it's not necessarily fair to blame him. In Iron Man 3, Tony is haunted by Thanos' army that almost invaded Earth in the prior Avengers movie, which is what motivates him to make extra suits to protect himself and his loved ones as a form of miniature army. That ended up backfiring tremendously so as a consequence he begins the Ultron Initiative as a way to put a suit of armor around the whole world. This results in the destruction of a large city as well as huge collateral damage that, going into Civil War, causes Tony to sign off on the Sakovia Accords, not because he wants to restrict anyone's freedoms but because he sees himself and his allies as dangers to those around them. Nearly every aspect of his actions is related to making up for his mistakes and protecting the ones he cares about but because his actions are dictated in part by what happened most recently, it gives every event an air of permanence, knowing that whatever happens to him, he will carry it with him. 

This is generally accepted as good continuity because it creates permanence throughout his story arc in a way that enhances his character as his story progresses. However, what about bad continuity? Well, there are two variations of bad continuity but let's start with the objective one, the one in which the continuity actually reduces the stakes and tension in the story as opposed to improving it.

In the Dragon Ball Franchise, the major McMuffin of the series are the dragon balls, seven orange colored orbs with stars on them that, when brought together, will summon the Dragon Shenron to grant the user a single wish.

Now, early on, Shenron's limitations weren't really all that established since Shenron himself was never really used for all that much. Later arcs would expand on his limitations and origins but for the first few arcs, the dragon balls are generally used for frivolous wishes such as a pair of panties or making yourself taller. This was fine in certain instances because early dragon ball was more of a comedy in places, so having characters that are vain enough to ask for those things is silly and quirky. Besides, the pair of panties thing in particular sounds bad because it's out of context, really it's a lot more benevolent than that makes it sound.

However, one thing that early Dragon Ball dealt with was the concept of death. There weren't too many established limitations on death but I believe it was Korrin that established that while the dragon balls can resurrect the dead, they can only do so if they didn't die of natural causes, their body is for the most part still in tact so Shenron can properly heal it, and it has to be within six months after the time of death. And even if all of those limitations are met, Shenron could still only resurrect someone once. 

Now, this use of resurrection is still more possible to use than say Jon Snow's resurrection from Game of Thrones. However, these limitations still created stakes as weird as that sounds. If a character dies and you want them to come back, you need to fill all of these conditions. This means that resurrecting them requires a game of timing, speed, and forethought. Speed in terms of gathering the balls, forethought in terms of how you want to phrase your wish. And timing in terms of when the dragon balls can be used. Because the dragon balls have this mechanic where, while they could grant almost any wish, they become inert for a year after the wish is granted. So the dragon balls go inert for a year but the time limit on resurrection postmortem is six months. This means that, in theory, if you used the dragon balls too recently, it would result in some characters receiving perma-death.

This wasn't really a problem though, since for the most part, Bulma was the only character in the series that had a proper means of gathering the Dragon Balls, and even when the Red Ribbon Army came close to doing so, Goku ended up just wiping them out and taking the balls for himself. Really, it was the no second chance aspect that really created tension.

You see, in the King Piccolo Arc, both Krillin and Chaotzu ended up dying as a result of King Piccolo's machinations. And while they did resurrect, Chaotzu dies a second time when Vegeta and Nappa touch down on Earth and Krillin is killed a second time by Frieza on Namek. If you knew nothing else about Dragon Ball other than what I just told you, that would create tension for many of our characters by giving them perma-death.

And with this information as well, it would also apply to Goku. Since Goku died at the hands of Raditz at the beginning of the Saiyan Saga and he only got one resurrection, the group decided to use it tactically and not resurrect Goku until the Saiyans came close to touching down on Earth so Goku could get as much training with King Kai in the afterlife as possible. That choice would then increase everyone's odds of survival by increasing Goku's power at a faster rate. But because there are no other variations of resurrection at this time, Goku could only be brought back the one time, after that it's game over.

This was especially bad after Piccolo died, Piccolo Jr. to differentiate him from his father, since killing him also killed the creator of the dragon balls, which in turn rendered them inert permanently. The only chance they had left after that was Krillin picking up on Vegeta's comment of a planet of Piccolo's species, which would then result in a potential second set of dragon balls. But even this had a huge degree of tension behind it.

Firstly is the unknown factor. The fact is, for the first time in the whole series, the dragon balls were permanently removed as an option from the characters' advantages. Sure, King Piccolo destroyed Shenron in his arc but it was very apparent even at that time that Kami, the person who made the dragon balls, still exists so he could just make a new set. This part completely removes Kami from the equation, so the characters no longer have a set of dragon balls to erase consequence. This has two particular ramifications.

The first is that, Krillin and Vegeta are both only speculating another set of dragon balls even exists. Sure they're talking about a planet of Piccolo's species, known as Namekians. However, the fact that Vegeta's even aware of them, creates the possibility that the namekians no longer exist. Since he works for Frieza and destroys, depopulates, and sells planets for a living, the possibility exists that the Namekians had been wiped out beforehand, or that the planet was just destroyed outright. Sure Vegeta and Krillin believe Planet Namek has another set but they don't know for a fact. So they're going out to find something that, for all intents and purposes, has no guarantee of success. 

And that's just factor number 1. Even if that set of Dragon Balls does exist, they don't know what else they could run into. Whether its monsters that are as powerful as Vegeta, weather conditions that could kill warriors as strong as Vegeta, technology that renders power moot as a concept, they don't know what they'll run into and because they don't have an undo function anymore, they have to be super cautious.

The other thing though, is that they already know that wherever they end up, Vegeta could easily be a problem for them. Because going after planet Namek was Vegeta's idea in the first place and, while Goku may be able to stand up to Vegeta later now that he no longer has a tail, Goku is out of commission for much of the Namek Arc, so if they do run into Vegeta, Krillin and Gohan are basically shit out of luck if they fail any diplomacy checks.

Things only get worse when they land on Namek and find that Frieza, along with a series of opponents that are even stronger than Vegeta are on the planet. At this point, since Goku is out of commission and there are at least 4 characters on the planet that Krillin and Gohan do not have a chance at beating, their job is to buy as much time as possible for Goku to arrive, even if that means working together with Vegeta, a shaky alliance that could fall apart any moment.

Now the introduction of the Namekian Dragon Balls is the beginning of Toriyama's endless attempts to reduce stakes as a narrative limitation as far as marketing is concerned. However, I say this purely in retrospect as, at the time, it probably wasn't obvious what Toriyama would later do since Porunga, the Namekian dragon, had limitations of his own. While he did come with the benefit of renewing every 133 days as opposed to every 365, he came with three wishes rather than one, and could resurrect someone an infinite number of times, Porunga only had the ability to resurrect one person at once. In other words, if you wanted to resurrect someone using Porunga and you had a list longer than 3 people, you'd have to pick and choose and some of them would have to wait until the next renewal.

Following this, in the Android Saga, Earth's dragon balls are taken temporarily out of commission after Kami fuses back with Piccolo, requiring a dragon clan member of the Namekian race to be brought back to Earth to bring them back. This would end up being Dende, the young namekian boy that Gohan and Krillin befriended in the previous saga. Dende would give Shenron more or less the same limitations he had before but now offers two wishes instead of 1. Aside from granting more wishes, this had an additional effect on the dragon balls that if they only used one wish, they renew in six months as opposed to a year. And then Porunga is reintroduced at the end of the arc with all of his same benefits except now Porunga under the new Grand Elder Moori would be able to resurrect as many people as he wished.

So let me describe to you this progression in a few sentences that took place over the course of decades. Resurrection started off as a mechanic that had to be used tactically, sparingly, and with a cast limit. Then, by the end of the series we not only had two sources of resurrection but, if used carefully, one of them would renew in half the time where the other would renew in roughly 1/3rd even just by default, he could resurrect as many people as you want as many times as you want and, even without Goku's teleportation skill, the friendship with the Supreme Kai who could not only teleport but was also keeping in constant contact with the main cast meant that that option isn't even a difficult one to access anymore.

The thing about this continuity progression though is that it's not technically inconsistent. An early rule with the dragon balls is that the dragon they spawn is as powerful as the Namekian makes them. So in theory a namekian could exist that could make a dragon so powerful that it can grant every wish from every person in the universe simultaneously. That seems particularly plausible these days with the super dragon balls and the introduction of gods and angels. The problem is that  this particular set of universal rules denies stakes by essentially creating a permanent reset button. With the current state of Porunga, it no longer matters how many people die at the hands of a villain, since he can just reverse it once the conflict's over. And after the introduction of the Super Dragon Balls, even the erasure of entire timelines, universes, or entities erased from every instance of those can be restored instantly as well. In fact, even having a reset button on the super dragon balls doesn't matter anymore either since a character like Zamasu simply goes back in time to right before the wish is granted to have as many wishes as he likes. Despite being powerful enough to affect universal cosmology the super dragon balls themselves do not exist outside that cosmology meaning destroying any instance of them in one universe or point in time or another will still leave them available for others provided said others exist outside of that instance.

Again, given internal consistency, none of this is necessarily contradictory to pre-established rules. But the way those rules have progressed creates a circumstance where now literally nothing matters because anything can be reversed once the conflict's been resolved.

So those are good and bad examples of continuity but what about when continuity is absent altogether? In this case, I direct you toward the Looney Toons cartoons from the 1920's. While the Looney Toons cartoons had a recurring roster of characters from Bugs Bunny, to Wile E. Coyote, to Elmer Fudd, all the way down to Yosemete Sam and Tweety Bird. These characters would frequently recur and interact with each other but seemingly always in different stories or different roles. Bugs Bunny for example was almost universally a chaotic trickster sort but the exact role he played differed from story to story. Sometimes he'd use his deceptions to avoid being hunted by Elmer Fudd, sometimes he'd perform magic tricks to deter Yosemete Sam, sometimes he'd be a theatre hand working for Elmer Fudd, sometimes he and Daffy Duck would play pranks on each other. It just depended on the situation.

Now, there is some cause to believe based on the final Looney Toons cartoon from that era that there was continuity in the sense that the shorts we were watching were in universe being filmed on a set and we just happened to be watching the movies, sort of like Robert Downey Jr. can be Tony Stark and Sherlock Holmes without anyone really questioning it. In that sense, the characters are less like characters with consistent histories and motivations and more like actors that are playing whatever roles are given to them at the time. Apart from this vague after credits hint though, it's generally accepted that no two Looney Toons cartoons overlapped unless one explicitly referenced a previous one, like Yosemete Sam noting that he's run into Bugs before.

But what about when continuity is absent in a bad way? I'm not going to be referencing super serious series for this one since, if you're working with a serious storyline one would assume that continuity would be present from the very beginning, so taking it away is just a universal no-no. Instead, I'm going to go in the opposite direction, where continuity was not in place at first but would be established later as a way to ground the tone. Sometimes this can be pleasantly surprising, like the Recollections Trilogy of Red vs. Blue but one particularly notable example comes in the form of Family Guy.

Family Guy is a very interesting case when it comes to continuity because not only did it establish continuity later in its run time long after many assumed that some events would obviously not carry over but the specific events that the series chose to canonize and decanonize are incredibly strange. Let's go over some examples.

Early in the series there's a joke about the birth of Chris Griffin, with Peter noting that Lois was very happy after he was born followed by a picture of Lois seemingly being drained of all life and Chris apparently being born the same size he is at the beginning of the series as a 14 year old. At the time this was very obviously just supposed to be a dark visual gag. But then something interesting happened: well, two things happened. The second, and less notable of these, is Stewie talking to Bryan about his birth and that due to coming after Chris he could've strolled out of Lois' birth canal while twirling a cane, something that when pressed he notes is only a slight exaggeration.

The other, much more noteworthy thing, though, is where Peter and Lois are talking to Quagmire about Chris' birth with everything they're saying not only suggesting that Chris actually was born the size of his obese 14 year old self but that the process of birthing him rendered Lois physically similar to what I assume is Izumi Curtis in Fullmetal Alchemist, bonus points if both mothers can use martial arts.

This seems like an odd thing to canonize when back in early Family Guy it would very easily be taken as nothing more than a joke. However, other events of this sort would occur as well. Such as Joe's story about being crippled by the Grinch on a Christmas Eve just being a story for the kids when in actuality he was crippled by a drug dealer in Mexico. Now, this particular one wouldn't bother me except for the fact that both Santa Clause and a giant talking Chicken are permanent fixtures in Family Guy. This is despite one only being referenced in an early episode and the Chicken in particular being introduced in an episode that has been confirmed non-canon, indicating that the Grinch being a fixture somewhere in this universe is seemingly well within the realm of possibility. Especially since other permanent fixtures like Spider-Man and the Force Ghosts of Star Wars are far more copyright protected than anything in a Dr. Seuss book indicates that, aside from the plot of this episode itself being garbage, there wasn't any real reason for anyone to suspect that it was fabricated. Even ignoring Bryan, who is a talking dog and just someone that exists, it's very difficult for anyone to expect Joe is lying about meeting the Grinch when other figures from other copyrighted works exist in the Family Guy universe as well.

Then there's an episode early on where Peter is confronted with his mortality via a bear attack and his flashbacks indicate that he had only just graduated from 3rd grade within the time frame the episode takes place. Clearly a joke about his mental retardation but a later episode with the Pawtucket Patriot Brewery that Peter works at had to put him on permanent leave until he graduated 4th Grade, which is the plot of that episode. It then gets referenced again when Meg finally snaps and starts roasting her abusers. As cathartic as that is for me on a personal level, this is such a bizarre thing to canonize when you consider that Peter is only mildly retarded based on an IQ test he took early on in the series and that there's no possible way he'd still be stuck at 4th grade if it was mild.

Normally, this wouldn't be noteworthy except when you start establishing continuity you open yourself up to criticism of it. If your series is a comedy show like The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy where continuity very rarely continues from one episode to the next unless otherwise specified, you can forgive if a prior event isn't referenced because prior events not occurring is the norm and a character or event being permanent are the outliers. Once you start grounding your series you begin to open yourself up to criticism as it pertains to continuity errors like plot holes. For instance:

1. Stewie started off as 11 months old, where Meg began the series at 16. As of the end of 2020, Meg has aged up to 18 while Stewie is still only a year old.
2. If Peter has mild-retardation and that's what kept him in 3rd-4th Grade for so long, why are there flashbacks to when he's 18-20 where he's attending high school events alongside Lois? If he's only there because of Lois, how did he manage all of those other things that he referenced in an early series flashback from around the same time? Surely if that one event is canon in that flashback, all of them are.
3. If Peter and Bryan have done everything in the world, which is the joke that lead to them confessing that they caught Loretta cheating on Cleveland, does this include things like curing cancer, meeting Walt Disney's corpse, and becoming president of the United States? Seems like if they didn't do those things that they didn't have a lot of desires in the first place. Which seems a bit weird to me given that I think every kid has dreamed about being the President, an Astronaut, or a Ninja at least once in their lives.
4. Speaking of, in a later episode, Peter takes a broken spaceship he acquired to the moon speaking about it as if he's always wanted it but that takes place after the Loretta-Cleveland thing. If Peter's always wanted to do that, was that something he forgot to do before revealing her affair, or is this his second time doing it? And if it is his second time doing it, then Lois' statement that Peter got lucky sounds a lot more like skill and experience to me, just saying.
5. If Peter really isn't descended from Nate Griffin, the slave that belonged to the Peuterschmidt's back during the Colonial Era, why does Peter look like Nate Griffin? Sure there are distinctions caused by being different races, but the key physical features are there, and many behavioral ones are too. Given that every biological male ancestor Peter is ever referenced having looks like him to some capacity, including his biological father Mickey McFinnegan, one would think that an unrelated man wouldn't look anything like Peter. Even Lois' direct siblings look almost nothing like her so this is clearly a Peter specific trait, yet what we're seeing suggests biological similarities between unrelated people.

Keep in mind, everything I referenced here has nothing to do with any form of cutaway. Cutaway gags are common in Family Guy and even in the present are generally accepted as non-canon and, while some can have narrative consequence, like a cutaway being an explanation for Peter's amnesia disappearing, for the most part I only referenced things that have to do with events that would later become canon.

What's happening here is poor use of Retroactive Continuity. Retroactive Continuity, which from this point I'll refer to as retcon as that's how most people know it and it's easier to say and type, is essentially where new information modifies context on pre-established events or rules and the rest of the series goes forward with it in mind. Going back to Dragon Ball for a moment, an example of retcon being used to repair a minor amount of damage is Goku's Saiyan biology being used to explain why Goku could defeat Tao within 3 days of losing to him despite nothing in the story really allowing it to occur, not even a power device since one isn't even present in this arc. It repaired a minor continuity issue at the cost of creating other issues. On the other hand, though, Family Guy's retcons that I just referenced not only create problems in the series' world building but they don't even exist to repair any form of continuity issue that was present beforehand.

Even taking many of those earlier jokes seriously, there are ways to canonize them without creating more issues. For example Nate Griffin could still be Peter's ancestor if it's through his mother. I believe it was established at their introduction that Peter's parents were divorced so if his adoptive father Francis had either taken his wife's name or simply lied about having taken it to protect Peter, that could still have allowed the McFinnegan reveal to work. Peter taking that space ship could've worked if Peter somehow didn't know what an astronaut was at the time he acquired it, thereby negating any problems with the Loretta episode. That may sound like a tall ask since Peter posed as a cowboy spaceman for his high school reunion, but he could've easily just thought they were terms that didn't actually exist. Although the high school reunion does suggest that Peter had graduated from high school at some point, which I guess is just another plot hole that I've just identified.

The reason this is an issue for Family Guy specifically and not something like Looney Toons is that Looney Toons made it very clear during its run that there's not much in the way of continuity. Obviously that's an icky thing to say for some people since any manner of things can communicate in any number of ways but in the Looney Toons cartoons, if two characters meet in two different episodes with drastically different roles and the prior one isn't referenced, then it's considered a brand new meeting. Even without the ending scene to establish an explanation, it's at the very least communicated to you once you've viewed more than a handful. Likewise at the end of The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, episodes often end with a catastrophe that wipes out the characters, the world, sometimes reality itself and then the next episode continues as if nothing happened. When every episode ends with the world coming to an end, you can assume that either continuity is largely absent or a Rick and Morty style timeline jump is occurring. Which may be possible in Billy and Mandy though only one actual episode actually suggests time manipulation as a possibility and that one also resulted in the characters getting erased from time itself so maybe not the best explanation.

Family Guy on the other hand took things that were previously assumed to be one off gags and made them permanent events that took place in the setting. Where they screwed up was by picking events that add nothing and harm the series as a result. And the "It's a comedy, don't take it too seriously" excuse falls apart when the nature of the comedy still allows continuity to take place. Once continuity takes place, it doesn't matter if the series is a comedy, you still have to accept information presented when the series isn't joking.

This is similar to The Simpsons with things like the impossibility of Springfield's location. Jokes like that are funny when they land but continuity exists outside of those jokes. So when something is presented as a permanent fixture in the series, it has to be taken as an indicator of continuity. And when that opens up inconsistencies elsewhere, you no longer have a defense.

So is continuity good? Not universally. Is it bad? Not really. Continuity, like anything else, is a writing tool and how you use it is what defines the quality of your work. Not whether or not it's there, not whether you start off with it and add it later or if you use it at first and then abandon it somehow, only how you use it.

That's all for today. Have a wonderful evening.